Beckmann Sketchbook 10 1915

This is Beckmann’s Sketchbook 10. It’s a bound book, a rectangle wrapped in faded burgundy cloth. You can see the weave of the canvas, and there is a small, sprung closure on the right. I look at this and think of the intimacy of a sketchbook. I can just imagine Beckmann, perhaps in a cafe, pulling this from his bag. Maybe he’s quickly trying to capture a fleeting moment, a gesture, or some interesting architecture. I love to think about that private process. Artists' sketchbooks are like secret diaries where they can just let loose. They aren’t for show, they’re places of pure experimentation. I bet if you opened it you’d find all sorts of things. Maybe quick portraits, landscapes, figure drawings, or abstract doodles. And all those lines and marks build up, and you get a sense of the artist’s hand, his energy, the way he saw the world. Sketchbooks show how the act of drawing is a way of thinking. It is how we work through ideas, how we make sense of things. So this little book is like a portal into the mind of a great artist.